DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to correspondence filed 26 June 2024 in reference to application 18/724,372. Claims 1-5 are pending and have been examined.
Response to Amendment
The preliminary amendment filed 26 June 2024 has been accepted and considered in this office action. Claims 1-5 have been amended.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-3 are objected to because of the following informalities:
In claim 1, “generates” should be “generate,” “extracts” should be “extract,” and “estimates” should be “estimate.”
In claim 2, “encodes” should be “encode.”
In claim 3, “wherein encodes” should be “wherein the computer program instructions further perform to encode.”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 3-5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Xiao et al. (US PAP 2020/0335119).
Consider claim 1, Xiao teaches A signal filtering device (abstract, figure 11) comprising:
a processor (0087, processing unit 1110); and
a storage medium having computer program instructions stored thereon (0087-88, memory 1160, storage 1130), when executed by the processor, perform to:
generates feature information on related information on a target signal (0038-39 extracting spectrum features of target speaker and embedding them);
extracts mask information from a mixed signal including the target signal based on the feature information (0050-43, mask extraction based on embeddings of target signal and mixed signal); and
estimates the target signal from the mixed signal using the mask information (0043, extraction of target speaker from mixed signal by applying mask).
Consider claim 3, Xiao teaches the signal filtering device according to claim 1, wherein encodes the related information into a first multidimensional vector (0038-39, embedding of target signal), encodes the mixed signal into a second multidimensional vector (0038-39 embedding of mixed signal), derives a similarity in time series between the first multidimensional vector and the second multidimensional vector (0040-41, also see 0027-28, determining similarities), and generates a result of a weighted sum of the similarity in time series and the mixed signal as the feature information (0042, equations showing weighted sum over time ).
Consider claim 4, Xiao teaches A signal filtering method performed by a signal filtering device (abstract), the signal filtering method comprising steps of:
generating feature information on related information on a target signal (0038-39 extracting spectrum features of target speaker and embedding them);
extracting mask information from a mixed signal including the target signal based on the feature information (0050-43, mask extraction based on embeddings of target signal and mixed signal); and
estimating the target signal from the mixed signal using the mask information (0043, extraction of target speaker from mixed signal by applying mask).
Consider claim 5, Xiao teaches A non-transitory computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that (0092 CRMs and code), upon execution of the instructions by a processor of a computer, cause the computer to function as the signal filtering device according to claim 1 (see rejection of claim 1).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xiao in view of Delcroix et al. (US PAP 2020/0143819).
Consider claim 2, Xiao teaches The signal filtering device according to claim 1 wherein the computer program instructions further perform to encodes the related information into a multidimensional vector (0039, embedding of vector with 512 dimensions), but does not specifically teach (although heavily implied through the use of weightings) generates a linear transformation result of the multidimensional vector as the feature information.
In the same field of neural speech separation, Delcroix teaches generates a linear transformation result of the multidimensional vector as the feature information (0027-28, performing linear transformation on the feature vector).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of effective filing to perform a linear transformation as taught by Delcroix in the system of Xiao in order to allow for portions of the feature vectors of higher importance to be given greater weightings.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Sivarman et al. (US PAP 2022/0084509) and Koshida et al. (US PAP 2021/0134312) teach similar methods of filtering using a target speaker and an estimated mask.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DOUGLAS C GODBOLD whose telephone number is (571)270-1451. The examiner can normally be reached 6:30am-5pm Monday-Thursday.
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DOUGLAS GODBOLD
Examiner
Art Unit 2655
/DOUGLAS GODBOLD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2655